Eastern Spot-billed Duck

About the Eastern Spot-billed Duck

The eastern spot-billed duck or Chinese spot-billed duck (Anas zonorhyncha) is a species of dabbling duck that breeds in East and Southeast Asia. This species was formerly considered a subspecies of the Indian spot-billed duck and both were referred to as the spot-billed duck (A. poecilorhyncha). The name is derived from the yellow spot on the bill.

The eastern spot-billed duck was described by the English biologist Robert Swinhoe in 1866 under its current binomial name Anas zonorhyncha. The name of the genus Anas is the Latin word for a duck. The specific epithet zonorhyncha is derived from the classical Greek words zōnē meaning "band" or "girdle" and rhunkhos meaning "bill".

Historically, the eastern spot-billed duck was usually considered as a subspecies of the Indian spot-billed duck (A. poecilorhyncha). The American ornithologist Bradley Livezey in a morphological study of the dabbling ducks published in 1991 proposed that the eastern spot-billed duck should be promoted to species status. Subsequently, fieldwork conducted at Hong Kong in southern China found that although both the eastern spot-billed duck and the Indian spot-billed duck (subspecies A. poecilorhyncha... Wikipedia →